Monthly Archives: May 2014

I am pleased to submit my application for your Part Time Kitchen Assistant vacancy. I have 12 months of strong background in the home kitchen industry. My current supervisor’s selfish need to make me breakfast and hand scrub my sippy cups has resulted in an ability to work independently and make high-level decisions with minimal supervision. Although I am grateful for the experience I’ve been afforded, I am seeking a new environment where creativity and innovation are celebrated, instead of met with exasperated sighs.

I am confident you will see that my application outshines that of my peers. Here are just a few examples of some strengths I bring to the table:

Maintain impeccable cleanliness standards through the identification and consumption of stray pieces of dog food, remnants from last night’s dinner, and other varia.

Assist in loading and unloading the dishwasher wherever applicable. Recognized for expertise…

The other day I discharged one of my women on day 23. This may sound quite late to still be visiting women after they’ve had a baby but personally I feel that day 14 is too soon. Most women’s partners are back at work after 2 weeks and that first week flying solo is really tough. You feel like you are constantly breastfeeding and the thought of even getting dressed and leaving the house is too much to cope with. So you stay in your pj’s watching day time tv and eating chocolate biscuits, checking Facebook, taking selfies of you and your new baby and using those amazing Instagram filters to hide your bags.

I gave my usual schpeel about seeing your GP at 6 weeks, contraception, pelvic floor exercises, baby clinic and asked what her support network like. She rolled off all the classes her and her pals she’d met…

It’s 4 a.m. I’ve struggled for the last hour to go to sleep. But, I can’t. Yet again, I am tossing and turning, unable to shut down my brain. Why? Because I am stressed about my students. Really stressed. I’m so stressed that I can only think to write down what I really want to say — the real truth I’ve been needing to say — and vow to myself that I will let my students hear what I really think tomorrow.

This is what students really need to hear:

First, you need to know right now that I care about you. In fact, I care about you more than you may care about yourself. And I care not just about your grades or your test scores, but about you as a person. And, because I care, I need to be honest with you. Do I have permission to be…

I’ve never told anyone these things. My parents, my sister, my friends – no one. So heads up. You’re the first to know.

For the last few years, I have grown, slowly but steadily, to despise the way my body looks.

When I was a kid, I was always told how skinny I was. I didn’t break fifty pounds until I was eight years old. In high school I was always the smallest – height and weight – of my friends. I grew up knowing, somehow, intuitively, that ‘being skinny’ was something good, that it was something I should maintain. In high school, that belief was confirmed and reinforced by magazines, friends who were constantly ‘dieting’, and my school’s insistence on athletic rigor and social ostracism of students who didn’t fit the body ideal. But I was always warned that, as a woman, ‘my time would come’, I would have kids…

I’ve never told anyone these things. My parents, my sister, my friends – no one. So heads up. You’re the first to know.

For the last few years, I have grown, slowly but steadily, to despise the way my body looks.

When I was a kid, I was always told how skinny I was. I didn’t break fifty pounds until I was eight years old. In high school I was always the smallest – height and weight – of my friends. I grew up knowing, somehow, intuitively, that ‘being skinny’ was something good, that it was something I should maintain. In high school, that belief was confirmed and reinforced by magazines, friends who were constantly ‘dieting’, and my school’s insistence on athletic rigor and social ostracism of students who didn’t fit the body ideal. But I was always warned that, as a woman, ‘my time would come’, I would have kids…

As we packed my mother’s belongings, my sister and I found scissors everywhere… scissors we could never find when we needed them, of course. These are a sampling with which we awkwardly spelled out “MOM,” with a backdrop of the afghan I saved.

My husband noticed something was wrong.

At first I hesitated. Then I told him, “No, it’s stupid.”

“I can tell something is wrong, what is it?”

“You’re going to think this is stupid. Actually, it is stupid. Ridiculous… [long pause]

“… Last night, I dreamed of an afghan.”

Lest he think I meant an Afghan rather than the knitted blanket I envisioned, I hurriedly clarified:

“I have been thinking of the afghan I didn’t take from my mother’s house — and wishing I had. Last night, I dreamed that I got the afghan back; this morning, I awoke and found I hadn’t… It’s stupid. It’s…